The Durango

Aeronautico

Aeronautico

Rear Admiral
I'm wondering if any specifications of backstory exist behind the Durango-Class Heavy Destroyer, the class that the famed BWS Intrepid was.

There really isn't much info available on the ship to my knowledge. We know of the BWS Intrepid and the BWS Tango, both of which appeared in-game in WC4. The Intrepid was once a destroyer, but was converted into a light carrier. I read in a much older post that Durangos were pulled from frontline service in 2663, but I do not know if this is accurate. From what I've seen, the Durango is a fairly obscure vessel, so I am wondering, what else do we know about it?

If there is anyone who knows more about this ship, I am all ears. My knowledge doesn't really extend beyond what was established in the game.
 
The Intrepid and the Tango were converted from Durango-class ships (with the addition of a flight deck). The Intrepid was originally the TCS Delphi.

2663 comes from Blair's remarks in the novelization that 'The Durangos were obsolete ten years ago!'; so, not so much that they were necessarily 'removed from service' exactly then as that they were very old.

I don't think it's really obscure... it's the home ship in Wing Commander IV -- but as with all such things, the bits of history we have derive from that rather than the other way around.
 
That helps clear up a few hazy details, thanks. However, we don't have many specifications on the vessel, like velocity, shields, armor, the Intrepid's fighter complement, etc. Do we have anything like that lying around?
 
Yeah, fighter complement would be interesting to know. From what was seen in WCIV, I'd say it had no more than something 20ish fighters... But then the WCP Midway felt like it only had two dozen fighters either. ;)
 
quaker2k8 said:
Yeah, fighter complement would be interesting to know. From what was seen in WCIV, I'd say it had no more than something 20ish fighters... But then the WCP Midway felt like it only had two dozen fighters either. ;)
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I haven't read The Price of Freedom in a long time, but I seem to recall that the hangar bay was formerly a torpedo bay on the underside of the central pod.
 
quaker2k8 said:
Yeah, fighter complement would be interesting to know. From what was seen in WCIV, I'd say it had no more than something 20ish fighters... But then the WCP Midway felt like it only had two dozen fighters either. ;)
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Actually, I think the WC4N put the fighter count between 50 and 60.
 
Aeronautico said:
That helps clear up a few hazy details, thanks. However, we don't have many specifications on the vessel, like velocity, shields, armor, the Intrepid's fighter complement, etc. Do we have anything like that lying around?
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I'm not sure if there was a manual for WC4 - given WC's history I would say there must be - but I would imagine that some things like velocity shields and armor weren't changed significantly enough from any stats from the Carrier version we might have to matter for your purposes (editing the Wiki?).

I think it would be sufficient for you to list details of the Durango class as being 'around' (~) whatever the specifications were for the carrier. The whole point of a slash/dash carrier conversion is to save on cost, if you're going to do that you're not going to change things like shield generators and engines. Granted, the mass of the ship has probably changed - but has it changed significantly enough to affect those numbers? Probably not.

However, since the old CIC Ships Database is missing the information, I'd say it's likely not to be found anywhere.
 
I'm not sure if there was a manual for WC4 - given WC's history I would say there must be - but I would imagine that some things like velocity shields and armor weren't changed significantly enough from any stats from the Carrier version we might have to matter for your purposes (editing the Wiki?).
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Wing Commander 4 did not come with a Victory Streak-type manual. The only specifications for WC4 ships comes from the internal game values which were then published in the official strategy guide. To the best of my knowledge, the stats for the Intrepid were not posted.

Does anyone know what the game values for the Intrepid are?
 
Actually, I think the WC4N put the fighter count between 50 and 60.
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I think that's right; IIRC the count gets up to 63 at some point -- including those ready to fly and the ones being stored below decks. There's no solid number, though, since the whole thing is spit and glue. Much like a creepy Facebook relationship status field, the complement is "whatever I can get".

Does anyone know what the game values for the Intrepid are?
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I don't think they've ever been posted/extracted -- and this lack is one of the big things holding up our Ships section overhaul. Anybody interested in researching this?
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I don't think they've ever been posted/extracted -- and this lack is one of the big things holding up our Ships section overhaul. Anybody interested in researching this?
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I would be if I knew how...in fact right after posting here I reinstalled my joystick drivers and started looking for my WC4 disc. :)
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I don't think they've ever been posted/extracted -- and this lack is one of the big things holding up our Ships section overhaul. Anybody interested in researching this?
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I figured the Ships section was being left to graze with WCPedia coming in. Are you guys planning on finishing off Ships 2.0 or rolling it into WCPedia at some point?
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Either way, we're stymied by our lack of correct in-game stats for the later games.
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I spent some time screwing around with WC4 to see what I could figure out, but no go. Not as easy to de-construct as WCP/SO, or maybe the tools just aren't as good.

Curious though - when you say later games, wouldn't that be only WC4? WCP had a pretty extensive manual with details, I thought.
 
I did do some research a while ago into WC3/4 stats. And I was supposed to do more research specifically to help LOAF out. Sadly, I just never had the time to do it. The tools for WC3/4 are much less developed than for WCP (though some tools, like WCPPas, are useful there as well), so it's a pretty hit-and-miss matter. The biggest problem is the filenames - TREMan can't handle WC3/4 TREs properly, so the files are given numbers instead of their original names. So even identifying all the ship files correctly is a challenge.

Oh, well. Maybe after Standoff is done I'll finally find the time to look into it again.
 
Quarto said:
The biggest problem is the filenames - TREMan can't handle WC3/4 TREs properly, so the files are given numbers instead of their original names. So even identifying all the ship files correctly is a challenge..
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I realized this. The problem I had was identifying what in each file did what.
 
Curious though - when you say later games, wouldn't that be only WC4? WCP had a pretty extensive manual with details, I thought.
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Wing Commander 3 and 4 are both mysteries -- Prophecy has been very well documented over the years.
 
Well, here's some stuff I salvaged form a WC4 Lexington file. I say 'a' file because there are multiple files belonging to each of the ships, as identified by the header info:

CHUNK "INFO"
{
cstring "LEX1"
}

This is actually one of only two lexington files I've come across, however, I've come across about 10 different Vesuvius files. Some of these have different names VES3 for example, some are just different file names.

FORM "GENP"
{
FORM "DYNM"
{
CHUNK "CPTL"
{
long 5
long 5
long 5
long 100
long 100
long 0
long 10
}
}


I'm not really sure what to make of this section. Roll/Pitch/Yaw at 5/5/5? And then maybe max speed at 100, with max afterburner at 100? And then I thought acceleration deceleration, but you can't have those at 0 and 10, can you? So I don't know.

FORM "DAMG"
{
CHUNK "CPTL"
{
long 6000
}
}

A long time ago someone made reference to the 'core' damage of the ship, this is probably it.

(I cut out a big chunk here that was for handling turrets, I'm assuming anyone can cruise around in game and count the turrets, but if wanted, I can paste it back in.)

FORM "SHLD"
{
CHUNK "DATA"
{
cstring "SHLDFX"
}
CHUNK "CPTL"
{
long 800
long 800
long 800
long 800
long 800
long 300
long 300
long 300
long 300
}
}
}

Again, I'm not sure how to check these. Ideally you would think the 800's were shields and the 300's were armor, but that doesn't seem to jive when you realize that there are five numbers here, and the normal front/back/left/right settings wouldn't apply. Unless one value was for the max?

If someone can help me puzzle all this out then I can make a go at peeking at the rest of the files.

(I started making a record, I got 1015 IFF files out of OBJECTS.TRE and have been keeping track as I open then one at a time what the Cstring is (if there is one). These files I'm decoding in WCPPAS 1.0 R24c. This is file 00000182.)
 
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